Beneath Ceaseless Skies #104

  Issue #104 • Sept. 20, 2012

  “The Ascent of Unreason,” by Marie Brennan

  “Worth of Crows,” by Seth Dickinson

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  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE ASCENT OF UNREASON

  by Marie Brennan

  “I want to make a map of Driftwood.”

  Watching Last cough up his wine at the words wasn’t the only reason for Tolyat’s declaration, but he had to admit it was part of the appeal. The man was a guide, and had seen so much, experienced so much, gone so many places, that it was hard to crack his shell of burnt-out weariness. One pretty much had to say something so outrageous it should never be uttered by a sane man.

  Tolyat leaned back, and nearly fell out of his hammock. They were in Kyey, where the local people had given over most of what remained of their world to the cultivation of some plant with an unpronounceable name, whose chief virtue was the production of tough fiber. The Kyeyi ate a little of it, sold a lot, and used the rest to make practically everything around them. Even the walls were mostly fiber, woven between the occasional piece of imported timber.

  Despite coughing, Last balanced on his hammock like he’d been born Kyeyi. He wiped his chin and set his wine horn on the table—more fiber, mixed with mud and baked hard. Even the wine was a byproduct of that damned plant, from the liquid drained off during fiber extraction. Tolyat thought it tasted like fermented rope, but Last, for some inexplicable reason, liked it.

  Last said, “Only idiots bother trying to make maps of Driftwood.”

  “So I’m an idiot. I still want to do it.”

  “Listen, Tolyat—”

  He swiped Last’s wine horn before the other could pick it up. “I know what comes next. You’re going to dip your fingers in this stuff and start drawing on the table, little concentric circles, Mist, Edge, Ring, Shreds, and then the Crush at the middle, and tell me that’s the only useful map anyone can make. Who said I was trying to be useful?”

  Last’s black eyes narrowed in skepticism, but a glimmer of curiosity broke through. “Then what are you trying to be?”

  Tolyat fiddled with the wine horn, rubbing his thumb over the rough place where the rim had chipped. The translucent material was almost the same orange-honey color as the scales of his skin. It wasn’t a color he saw often, not anymore. Not since he’d left his own world, losing himself in the study of Driftwood and its patchwork composition.

  He wanted to have a meaningful answer to Last’s question. Partly for his own satisfaction, but even more as a gift to his friend. Some kind of grand philosophical mission, something that would push back, if only for a moment, against the inescapable nihilism of this place. They lived surrounded by death: every world around them was in the process of ending, the final fragments crumbling into oblivion, and it was easy to fall, as Last had, into apathy and despair.

  He could try saying something noble. Something about how mapping the face of Driftwood—even if the map would be obsolete before they could blink—would preserve this moment for future generations and worlds to know.

  Instead he told the truth. “I just think it would be fun.”

  Last’s dark eyebrows rose. Tolyat found those lines of hair endlessly entertaining; they expressed so many emotions. In this case, it was a mix of disbelief and weary resignation. “Fun. Do you have any idea how long that would take? Going from world to world, dealing with all the language barriers, all the different customs, hoping the air the next block over will still be something you can breathe—not to mention figuring out what standard of measurement you should use.” He shook his head. “I may be good at what I do, Tolyat, but even I don’t know all of Driftwood. You’d need an army of guides, and a longer lifespan than your race has got. What are you grinning at?”

  The grin had been spreading during Last’s entire speech, until Tolyat felt he could barely hold the laughter in. Rather than answer, he fished in his pockets, pulling out two small stone discs. He stacked them atop one another, smooth faces up, placing both on the table. “Ever seen these before?”

  Last peered at their pearlescent surfaces. It wouldn’t have surprised Tolyat if he said he had; sometimes it really seemed the guide had seen everything. But he shook his head.

  Still with the grin, Tolyat said, “Watch this.”

  When he flipped the topmost disc, smooth side down, it no longer sat atop its mate. Instead it rose into the air, perhaps a handspan—Tolyat’s handspan; two of Last’s—above the table.

  Last shrugged, unimpressed. “Magnets. So?”

  “Not magnets. Something better. I bought them from Etthril in Flatwall, but they come from a place called Bhauin, a bit Edgeward of Ik. A girl there has rediscovered the secret of making them, if you can believe that; for once something in this place has been learned, rather than lost. But she can make them bigger. And stronger.”

  Still Last frowned. “What has that got to do with mapping?”

  Tolyat thought the grin might actually split his face open, like the old carvings of the demon Sevot, back in his home world. Split it open, and let his excitement come pouring out. “I’m not going to go through Driftwood. I’m going to go above it.”

  * * *

  Boundaries between worlds were unpredictable about what they stopped, and what they allowed through. Weather usually didn’t pass beyond its home world. Rivers sometimes ended at the border, sometimes flowed on through to flood a neighboring ghetto. Sound usually went, but not always; Tolyat didn’t hear the singing—if he could call it singing—until he stepped across the border into Bhauin. “What is that?”

  Last, he suspected, had taken it as a personal affront that Tolyat had known something he didn’t. Which was actually encouraging, though Tolyat would never admit it; he’d seen more life in the man these past few days than he had in ages. Last had roused enough to hunt down every bit of information he could find about this Shred—and when he put his mind to it, he was a very good hunter. “Didn’t I mention?” Last said. “There’s a religious revival underway.”

  Those were rarely good. In Driftwood, a “religious revival” usually meant that some self-proclaimed messiah had convinced people they could save themselves, and their world, by killing whoever the messiah didn’t like. The inhabitants of a neighboring Shred, perhaps—or any stranger who wandered in. “Should we be here?”

  “Don’t worry. That girl you mentioned, who makes the stones? They’ve decided she’s blessed by the gods. A prophesied leader, come to save them.” Last shrugged, his expression wry. “Not that they ever had any prophecies before now; they imported that idea from Ik. Anyway, it’s all very happy and optimistic. No killing required. Though what they’ll do when you ask to buy stones, I don’t know. How many do you need?”

  While Last had researched Bhauin, Tolyat had tried to do calculations. He didn’t get very far: there were too many variables, most of them obscure to him. How powerful could the girl make the stones? Over what range could they operate? At least he’d verified that they worked in every Shred he’d tried; their repellent force seemed to translate across borders. But he couldn’t admit he didn’t know. “A dozen pairs, maybe. More wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  “A dozen.” Last blew a slow breath out. “Well, let’s see what the prophesied leader has to say.”

  The Bhauish notion of singing involved alternating between a strident ululation and a series of harsh caws. There seemed to be a pattern to it; Tolyat thought he had almost worked it out by the time Last got the prophesied leader to stop ululating and cawing in his face. She was a tiny thing, even more so than the rest of her race, and pale as blo
od; she looked like a juvenile, but she listened attentively enough when Last spoke in the local pidgin. “You make these stones?”

  They didn’t know what the Bhauish called the things, so Tolyat reluctantly brought out his pair, to illustrate. A murmur ran through the gathered crowd, that sounded hostile to his wary ears.

  Last heard it, too, but he made a business out of taking people into hostile Shreds, and bringing them back out again. When the girl growled something half-intelligible about how the stones shouldn’t be spread outside of Bhauin, Last was unfazed. “These have gone through the hands of half a dozen merchants; they’ve been outside your world for nearly two of your years. How long ago did you regain the gift of making them?”

  Her answer was easier to make out. “At moonrise.”

  Tolyat glanced up, saw an enormous crescent of cobalt blue hanging in the sky above them. That told him nothing; lunar cycles varied wildly between worlds. But Bhauish astronomy was apparently one of the things Last had picked up on his hunt, because he said, “See? Your goddesses aren’t angry that it was sold. Maybe they want Bhauish stones to be spread to other worlds. This fellow here would like to be your first customer.” He pointed at Tolyat, who smiled and hoped the Bhauish weren’t a race who read things like that as a sign of aggression.

  They didn’t seem to be. The prophet-girl muttered to one of her companions in a language that sounded like the cawing from a moment before, then turned back to Last and Tolyat with an expression that could only be called predatory. Suppressing a sigh, Tolyat braced himself for some hard bargaining.

  * * *

  The first time Tolyat flipped over one of the new shauein stones, it went through the ceiling of his room and cracked the cross-timber of the roof one story above. When he scrambled up there to grab it, the stone was all but glued to the wood, trying to force itself still higher, and his upstairs neighbor was less than amused at the delight on Tolyat’s face.

  He conducted a second test in the caverns of Neggaeph, first building a scaffold he could wheel around to retrieve any levitating stones from the ceiling. With the figures from that, he sat down to calculate just how this plan would work.

  Last sprawled across one of the curved stone couches that lined the wall and watched him work for a few minutes. Then he spoke, in a tone that was far too carefully neutral. “You realize you’ll have to place yourself near the Crush.”

  “I know.” Tolyat had thought of that ages ago, before he ever showed the shauein pair to Last—but it didn’t prevent his stylus from skidding a little, gouging an errant line in the wax of his tablet.

  Observing that, Last said, “Despite what people think, it can’t pull you in.”

  “I know.” Which was true, but irrelevant to his nerves. The Crush was the black heart of Driftwood, a tangled, broken mass of fragments too small to call worlds. Everything went there in the end. Unsurprisingly, few people in Driftwood liked to talk about it, and nobody wanted to go anywhere near it. When a world drew close, any inhabitants it might have left generally abandoned the place, losing themselves in the sea of cross-bred Drifters who belonged to no world.

  But it was the center point, as near as anybody could tell. If Tolyat wanted to see the whole of Driftwood at once, he had to be close to the Crush.

  He bent his head over his tablet once more, carving careful figures with the stylus. Last let him work in silence. When Tolyat finished, he said, “Eight should be enough—they’re more powerful than I expected—though I’ll install all twelve, just in case they weaken or a few get jarred loose. But I should be able to lift you, me, and the basket with just eight.”

  The eyebrows shot up again. Tolyat wondered what it must be like, having hairs on your face that advertised your every reaction. Last said, “Who and the basket?”

  “You and me.” Tolyat laid down his tablet and stylus. “You are coming with me, right?”

  * * *

  The world he chose for the launching-point had two important lacks: people, and wind.

  It was, as Last had advised, close to the Crush—close enough that what little of it still existed had been abandoned quite some time ago. Nobody was around to object when Tolyat paid a pair of Ffes to knock down what remained of the only surviving building and flatten the ground, into which he set one half of each shauein pair. As for wind, none of the neighboring Shreds had storms that would spill over into this nameless world-fragment and threaten to knock the basket from its alignment above the stones.

  By now the rumors had spread; half the population of the Shreds seemed to know that Tolyat the scholar was trying something mad, and most of them had come to watch. A few people volunteered themselves to keep the crowds back as Tolyat made his final preparations. They parted, though, to allow Last through—along with the cart he was dragging behind him.

  Tolyat paused to stare. “What in the name of everybody else’s god is that?”

  “Backup.” Last dropped the cart shafts, and a flounce of cloth spilled out the front. “Help me attach this to your basket.”

  “Not until you tell me what it is.”

  The guide sighed and stepped closer, lowering his voice so the watching crowd wouldn’t hear. “You’ve heard the stories about me, right?”

  “Stories?”

  “The ones that say I can’t die.”

  “Oh.” Tolyat scratched his earhole in embarrassment. “Yes.”

  It was, he thought, the foundation of their friendship, or at least part of it: he never asked questions about Last. He’d given it some thought, back when they first met. If it was true that Last was immortal, that he was the one thing in Driftwood that didn’t die, then the trick to it must not be anything he could share with other people; otherwise he would’ve been the richest man in any world. If it wasn’t true, then the man was probably tired of people chasing after a secret he didn’t have. Either way, there was no point in Tolyat asking.

  But now Last had brought it up, and curiosity overwhelmed that logic. He couldn’t resist saying, “Are those stories true?”

  Last’s mouth was set in a line that might have indicated either terror or suppressed hilarity. “I have no intention of giving you a chance to find out. The fabric’s a big sack, open on one end; we attach it to the basket, with the open end down, and light this furnace underneath to fill it with hot air. Once it’s full, we’ll float.”

  Tolyat dropped his armful of fabric. “You want me to trust my life to magic floating hot air?”

  “You’re already trusting it to magic floating stones, aren’t you? This works, trust me.” Last shrugged. “Hasn’t been used in Driftwood since Ad Aprinchenlin went into the Crush, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Falling hurts, Tolyat—a lot. I’d rather have two things between me and the ground, not just one.”

  Grumbling, Tolyat helped. The sack was shaped like a bottle, with a narrow neck; enormous as it was, he didn’t trust the flimsy fabric to hold anything. But the weight was negligible, even with the furnace, and it seemed to make Last feel better.

  Once the sack was in place, Tolyat turned around—and realized there was silence. The entire crowd was watching in breathless anticipation. They packed the narrow streets of the adjacent Shreds, peering out of windows and from rooftops of abandoned buildings, in every world-fragment but the even smaller ones that lay Crushward. And judging by their expressions, they wanted a speech.

  He’d been too busy with calculations and the gathering of supplies to plan any kind of speech. “Um,” Tolyat said, scratching his earhole again. It was Last’s original question all over again, with him feeling like he ought to have something grand to say in response.

  “I’m going to go make a map of Driftwood,” he said. “As detailed as I can. Maybe you think that’s a waste of time, and maybe you’re right. But I’m going to do it anyway. So wish me luck—pray I don’t die—and when I get back to the ground, I’ll tell you what I saw.”

  And with that sorry attempt behind him, he turned and climbed into th
e basket.

  Last was already inside. The thing wasn’t very big; Tolyat could span it with his arms, and that damned sack and furnace took up most of the available space. The rest held his tools, the paper and ink and measuring devices he would use to draw his map. He had to root around beneath all that equipment and fabric to find the shauein stones set into the floor of woven Kyeyi fiber, mounted in rotating brackets.

  “Ready?” he asked Last.

  The guide still had that look, terror or hilarity. But whichever it was, it brought his black eyes alive. “Let’s see what this place looks like from above.”

  On a counted signal, they each flipped one shauein stone, on opposite sides of the circular basket. This was part of why Tolyat wanted Last; he had to activate two pairs of stones at once, or the basket risked unbalancing, tipping him out onto the ground. With the repellent faces toward each other, the stones pushed away from their mates below, and the basket began to rise.

  Only a little, and slowly. Which was fine by Tolyat. He had no desire to go shooting uncontrolled up into Driftwood’s sky. He and Last each moved a quarter-turn around the basket’s circumference; Tolyat dug beneath the slick fabric of the sack and found the next stone. Two more flipped, and the basket rose further. Now they were above the tallest buildings in the vicinity of the Crush, but glancing outside showed him various towers scattered around the huddled mass of the Shreds, and even something that looked like a broken bit of mountain. If he wanted to see the whole of Driftwood, they would have to go higher still.

  Two more stones, and then two more. Eight pairs of shauein stones, pushing the basket into the sky, Tolyat’s heart beating faster with every turn. He cast another glance through a gap in the woven side, frowning, trying to think. This was where his calculations became uncertain, and maybe the weight of that furnace was throwing them off. “Again,” he said, and together he and Last flipped a ninth and then a tenth pair.

  That should be high enough. Taking a deep breath, Tolyat stood up.